I like the Internets ... a lot.

January 2007

01/31/2007

What follows is a near copy of a post I did within my own organization's Intranet ... I wanted to repeat it here for those of you outside our little walled garden that invited to join the Twitter experiment.

I just got done inviting a bunch of people into Twitter. I knew I would be asked if I was interested in "tracking" people ... the answer is a resounding no. I am interested in the tool and I am more interested in its potential for teaching, learning, and organizational purposes. I was talking with our CIO this morning about it and we were discussing the notion of using a tool like this (as part of a larger suite) to help us understand each other a bit better. It gives us a little insight into what both our collective and individual days look like. There are tons of good that can come from it ... and yes, I agree there is the other side to that.

I hope you all know me well enough by now that I only care that you are doing your jobs -- not the details of how you do it. We are all professional and work like mad to make it all happen, so I am not interested in tracking your minute by minute. We don't do time tracking and never will as long as I get my way ... our jobs are to explore and expose our audiences to the power of appropriate uses of technology for teaching and learning. That means thinking, researching, engaging in conversations, and all sorts of stuff that will never show up on a time tracking sheet. So when I ask that you do something silly like join Twitter and indulge me in it, all I am after is an opportunity for myself (selfish) and you to better understand an emerging space online. The question of privacy is age old and I think we all have a grasp on what should and shouldn't go on.

At the end of the day, you decide what you do and don't engage in. I just wanted to be clear that there isn't a drop of pressure to participate -- and I don't want you to be worried about it if you choose to sit this one out. Honestly.

01/30/2007

By now if you've either shown up here at the blog or talked to me you know I am nearly consumed by Twitter. Not in a way that is destructive, but in a "I wonder how this thing can do good, not evil" sort of way. Yesterday morning I tried something new ... For some reason I decided to head over to one of my colleagues sites to see what was new and saw that he had added a link to his newly created Twitter page. He didn't just have the link, he added a little commentary saying that "Big Brother Begins."

Seeing that I decided to see if I could create an opportunity for engagement ... I quickly created a very short post over at the ETS Blog space asking if Twitter is Big Brother. From there I simply sent out a quick Twitter asking for my friends to respond to a post over at the ETS site.

I know it didn't create a ton of conversation on the blog, but it did in real life. I will say that within 10 minutes two people responded and posted comments from my Twitter network. What I wanted to see was if Twitter could spark (and perhaps encourage) discussion in another form. It has me wondering how students would react to similar stimuli ... you know, ring the Twitter bell and see if they respond the way you've conditioned them. Maybe ask an instant poll via Twitter (like Brad did yesterday) as class is ending and see what you come up. Like I said, I am really interested in how this shakes down for good, not evil. I am interested in how this type of quick, casual conversation can create an opportunity for a larger conversation. Does anyone see potential?

01/27/2007

I was lucky enough to visit with Odeo sometime last year while on business in San Fransisco and thought what they were doing at the time was very interesting and honestly very important in the education space. I remember sitting in their SF office space in a conference room that looked down into the developers area and remembering how much I missed the days of start ups and small teams all working together to do good things. That aside, the tools they were building (and have since killed off) are still the holy grail of podium podcasting as far as I am concerned. The Flash based recorders they had were amazing and the fact you could record right in the browser, or by calling a special phone number impressed me and a bunch of students who were using it in my class. I could tell they were smart people ... but to tell you the truth they seemed to be searching for their true space. I guess that's why I wasn't too surprised to learn that they are now part of Obvious and that they have once again changed exactly what they do.

But this post is about Twitter -- another Obvious product that according to this came about as a side project down in that developer's space I could see from the glass conference room.

I have been reading about Twitter for a few months now but never really thought much of the concept. The idea of wasting time to update the mundane seemed not only silly, but almost downright stupid. But then I got an account, asked a bunch of co-workers to get accounts, and started to think out loud with them about how we could use this. I am now seeing Twitter as a very interesting tool set for a whole host of things ... a bunch of them are around organizational dynamics, structure, project tracking, and other on the job kinds of things. There are obviously fun things that can be done with Twitter, but as I am thinking more and investigating I am finding people doing good things with it. I can see educational opportunities on the horizon, but I need more time to formulate them. Here's an example of a woman who has been using Twitter to do sort of live walking tours -- there's something in that concept that needs to be further teased out. I am thinking about the upcoming TLT Symposium and how we could use Twitter to keep people on the outside feeling like they are a part of it ... again, there's something to this.

Here's an example of what I am thinking about as a single possibility ... we are having a plasma display hung in the hallway when you get off the elevator in our offices. One thing that strikes me as an interesting thing to display there would be a custom Twitter widget of some sort that would integrate with the kiosk style information we'll be displaying on the screen (did I mention they have an exposed API?). What strikes me as interesting is the fact that as a person walks off the elevator not only are they greeted with high quality digital signage that speaks to who we are, the Twitter stream could let them instantly know what we are all doing. If I could get more of the ETS staff using Twitter we could create a fairly interesting running archive of what a given day looks like in ETS -- when I get asked the question, "what the hell do you people do all day," I could simply pull the ETS Twitter Stream up and let them look for themselves. Another thing that we've been discussing is if by updating Twitter status people would be more likely to stay on task? I really don't know the answer, but I do know I would be less likely to take the time to walk across the hall to ask a colleague a question if their Twitter status told me they were talking with a faculty member. Again, just thinking out loud. One thing I would want to add to Twitter to use it as a business tool is the ability to "tag" Twitter messages with things like "work" or "personal" and only see the work tagged updates show up on the ETS Twitter Stream.

So now that I have a handful of friends on Twitter updating their status I am getting a good feeling for what it is all about. One of my friends, Brad Kozlek, had knee surgery this past week and was providing Twitter updates during the day ... it was an interesting example of how this thing can be used for all sorts of stuff. The next couple of weeks will see us tease some more information about Twitter out ... if it is useful you'll see more and if it isn't you won't. Either way I think it is worth some more investigation. For now, you can check me out on Twitter ... get an account and add me as a friend so we can see what happens in a large network. I have integrated one of the pre-built Twitter badges here at my site that keeps a running list of the people in my Twitter network. Join in and tell me what you think.

01/26/2007

I remember the days when Microsoft would set its sights on a space and just destroy it -- remember those days? I'm sure you remember the not-so-epic battle between Netscape and IE ... back in grad school I did a presentation called "Web War" that pitted the two browsers against one another. It was sort of funny at the time for two reasons ... one, Netscape was so far ahead no one worried about it (snicker) and two, I did the whole thing in Macromedia Director -- what can I say, I was into media.

At any rate, this post over at TechCrucnh has nothing to do with browsers, but does point to some interesting rumors of Google getting in the virtual world space. I think I recall Google's slogan as being something like, "do no evil" or something ... I also remember them talking about not never wanting to be like Microsoft. Well, guess what? They are getting closer to MS domination -- not in the same ways, but they are in a position to own a lot of information, eyeballs, and mindshare. If Google gets into the Second Life space, watch out. They have the weight to turn SL into the next Netscape ... what with Ad Sense and that amazing Google Earth thing they have a jump towards the economy of a VW is not too far fetched ... oh, did I mention Sketch Up or whatever it is called? This could shape up as Web War II ... or just be another rumor and be nothing at all. Just thought it was interesting.

01/23/2007

I am sure this isn't news to anyone, but it appears as though much of the web is in a constant state of beta. Think Gmail and its constant little reminder that this isn't a real service ... heck it could go away at any moment. I use it, my wife lives in it, and lots of people at the University forward all of their mail to it. Does anyone care it could disappear? I use Flickr for all my online photo storage and sharing ... I do this even though I have a .Mac account that is not a "gamma" product like Flickr. I notice lots and lots of people spending time in there ... the list just rolls on -- you know, services that we rely on that we just turn the other cheek to the reality of their potential lack of staying power.

In higher education we seem to have some very strict definitions of what a service means ... in my higher education administrator's mind a service is a fully supported tool that has close to five nines reliability. The five nines thing is questionable in reality, but plays well as a goal. I have to tell you that I am now seeing what it takes to support user populations that number in the 100s of thousands I am much more careful of the words I use to describe things. Take the Podcasts at Penn State project ... do we have a podcasting service here at the University? Sorta ... our iTunes U implementation is in pilot and so are all the supporting pieces to the podcasting stuff going on here. That means there really isn't any true PSU HelpDesk support, no 24/7 server management, and there certainly aren't any money back guarantees that it'll be a five nines environment. But at the end of the day, should that all matter? At the moment, we plaster the word pilot all over the thing, but we have gone from about 35 faculty podcasting last semester to well over a 100 this semester ... adoption is happening simply because we have taken the plunge and created an opportunity.

With the growth in the beta mentality of Internet users should we start a new classification of Internet Tools? Maybe instead of talking about our services, we should talk about our emerging opportunities. So as we look to release the first bit of the Blogs at Penn State project we could look at it as just an emerging opportunity for members of our community to engage in. Not a full service. Could we create a new classification of opportunities that aren't judged by their total up time or a promise that they will always be available -- even over the long haul?

Can we create more agility of we work to establish a set of experimental opportunities that our communities can simply engage in while they are available? The good ones with high adoption rates would then get the attention they need to become services ... if it works for Google Labs, why can't it work in an environment where technical resources are spread very thin? I'm not talking about creating environments that would compromise end user security, privacy, or data ... the building blocks to manage and protect identity are well established in our enterprise. I am simply asking if we could take a step back from the idea that everything has to scale to our total user base out of the box.

This is me just thinking out loud here ... anyone have any thoughts on it all? With a change in mentality could we all offer a greater experience to our users? Or would we be cheating them by not making it all bullet proof? Just a set of questions that have been banging around in my head for a while now ... thoughts?

01/22/2007

I was supposed to be in Atlanta this week for ELI, but alas I am still sick after nearly 10 full days. Ear infection, sinus infection, and now the worst sore throat I think I've ever had. The bummer with missing ELI is that I actually really like their take on things -- they pay attention to the little guy and innovation seems to matter to them. It is so less formal than the big Educause annual event ... it is just a nice place to spend a few days. The other bummer was that I was going to get to hang out with three great high school friends who moved to Atlanta years ago. Oh well ... always next year.

Speaking of real life, I came across perhaps one of the best sites I have seen in quite some time -- Get a First Life. I have a Second Life account and I even play (is that what you do in SL?) it every now and then. At ETS we are offering an Engagement Award for faculty who want to something interesting with it and a colleague of mine, Brett Bixler maintains a blog for us related to it. At any rate the hype and almost ironic utilization of SL has always made me feel a little less than impressed with it as a real life simulator. I guess I'm not the only one ... Darren Barefoot has built one of the best things I've seen in a long time. It has to be worth a peek.

01/17/2007

Who is heading to the Educuase Learning Initiative conference in Atlanta next week? Anyone, anyone ... if you are let me know and we can get together for a podcast, a drink, a conversation, or all the above.

01/16/2007

One of the core concepts we have been working towards within ETS at PSU is the idea of creating more opportunities to engage our community. If you have spent any time here over the last year you know our community is huge. We throw around numbers like 100,000 when talking about our statewide faculty, staff, and student numbers. When you are dealing with massive scale and the geographic challenges our campus system creates you need to get creative about how you get people engaged.

Clearly with a staff of 35 or so folks you can reach a lot of people, but not the kinds of numbers we hope to. If you can find a way to move opportunities to the people and get champions working at each College/Department/Campus to spread the word you can radically change the ratio. I've written about all this before, but we have started to see some change. This past semester we put into place the Foreign Language Podcasting Studio here at the University Park Campus and we've now taken our next step in our quest to widen our network.

This semester ETS has started the Engagement Initiative. It is designed as an evolving set of opportunities to engage faculty, staff, and students in the use of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and research. One of the first projects to emerge from the program is now going on. The McKeesport Podcasting Engagement Project with Kathleen Brown as the lead faculty has been initiated to help her redesign her journalism course to take advantage of web 2.0 concepts. You'll be seeing more about her program over at the ETS site, but for now Chris Millet posted some pictures of his trip to McKeesport to setup the first Campus Podcasting Studio. We are all very excited about this and what is tocome.

I am curious how others work to engage their audiences at their campuses and beyond. We are using spaces like the ETS Blog, the Symposium Space, and now these remote Studios to help shift the opportunities we provide our core audiences. What do you all do?

01/15/2007

Not sure how I missed this last week, but it appears as though Microsoft has announced its plans to release Office 2008 -- I know it just turned 2007, but the folks in Redmond say that even though the box says 2008 they will give it to us in the second half of 07. Nice of them isn't it?

Office has become one of the least used set of apps in my Dock ... Word very rarely comes to life unless it absolutely has to -- in other words if someone else sends me something. PowerPoint? Forget about it, Keynote is where I spend my presentation life. I do find myself in Excel more than I care to admit, but that is a major shift for me in the last year. All in all we'll get our Universal version of Office with the nice XML format, but I'm not sure how much I'll use it. Time will tell.

Update: If this TUAW gallery is any indication, I may find myself back in Office a bit more.